


Simple

by Potboy



Category: Motive (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, for Unusual_Disaster, gift fic for the Motive Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd been thinking this was complicated, but you know what? It isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple

Angie is impressed. Oh, there had been diamonds at the wedding, but the Christmas party is ablaze with galaxies of them, as though Mr. Vega senior had sent out a couple of minions to empty the sky of stars.

“O...kay,” she grabs Oscar's arm to steady herself. High heels, lack of practice, two glasses of complimentary champagne at the door. “Is this intimidation, d'you think? Or has he always had a secret passion for bling you've just never told me about?”

Oscar of course looks... well, to say 'right at home' would be unfair, because while she has no doubt that he'd spent an obscene amount of money on that suit, and it was sharp on him, he also looked like he'd just found this thing in the wardrobe and thrown it on. Casual elegance that murmured of wealth without flaunting it, the kind of style that said he hadn't given it much thought – he just attained perfection by raw nature and talent.

It was such a lie. She knew for a fact that he had spent the entire week dithering over cufflinks and getting his waistcoat taken in and comparing ties and buying new shirts and pressing whatever endless number of mysterious things went into high class gentlemen's wear and needed pressing.

Now, despite the preparation, he was rubbing finger and thumb around the platinum stud of his cufflink, ill at ease. 

“There've been rumors he's not paying a lot of attention to the business,” he turns towards her and they sway together as she wishes again she had worn flats. “So he might be reassuring his investors.” His smile is a low watt version of the usual mischief, and she doesn't like that – doesn't like that being around his family makes him careful.

It's Christmas, dammit. You should be among people where you can kick back and drink too much and sing at the top of your voice, knowing that they'd join in.

“But it could be that she just likes finger-painting with glitter.”

That's as catty as Oscar gets. It's not hard at this point to deduce that he doesn't actually want to be here, but hey, they've been in some unpleasant corners together before this and they didn't all come with free champagne and “Ooh, vol-au-vents!”

She sticks her hand high in the air and beckons the server over. They haven't given her a plate – because they're not technically inside yet, just waiting at the end of the receiving line to file up and shake hands with the hosts. So she makes a triangle of vol-au-vents in the palm of her hand and sets one on top of it like a little pyramid of buttery flaky pastry, cream and smoked salmon.

People are watching, and some of the disgusted faces make her wish she'd brought a camera as she engulfs the first canape whole. That's good. But Oscar's smile is better. He knows she's cheering him up, he appreciates it, and it's working.

“Tell me again this dress is good enough to pass?” She thought she looked like a million dollars before she arrived – fancy hairdo with a couple of wild curls loose to look soft, midnight blue velvet dress she's renting out for the evening – but that was before she was surrounded by folks who'd literally spent a million dollars on an outfit. She personally felt the tiaras were a little much.

“You look fantastic.” 

Maybe it's the champagne that makes this statement sound so significant, but she's actually having a pretty fine time, though it's warm in here – isn't it warm?

“But the shoes might have been a step too far.”

“Oh,” she chuckles, “you can't talk to me about shoes. I'm so onto you and your shoe fetish.”

He snags a carrot stick from a passing tray and points it at her, which is frankly the best thing to do with a carrot stick. “Far be it from me to discourage your late-blooming interest in footwear, but one of the essential aspects of a good pair of shoes is that you should be able to walk in them.” 

Kinder than his words, he angles an arm out to her and she leans on it, a little more heavily than necessary. He's always like this - solid and sheltering and calm inside like a harbor wall. She'd thought that was a friend thing, a partner thing, a relief from the stress and anxiety that comes with the excitement of lovers. She's thought he was too safe for her, but here, where everyone thinks they're together already, she wonders suddenly what if? What if they were to try? She trusts him with her life. Surely he'd be as reliable with her heart?

'Reliable' has not been what she's been looking for all these years. She's always liked a degree of danger and excitement out of her men, but maybe that's why she's found herself lately hurtling towards emptiness, Manny moved out, facing a long middle age alone.

Unsettling thoughts, but Angie's always been the kind of person who follows a new intuition as far as it will go. She frowns as she absently snags another glass of champagne.

“Are you all right?” He notices, of course. “I'd have said that was a 'let's consider the motive' expression, but I'm not aware that anyone's been murdered at the party yet.”

“Yet?”

“Oh well, these dos can get quite wild.”

They're almost to the top of the line now, so she traces a surreptitious line around her lips with her fingers, checking for crumbs. Oscar's father, well, she did do the research. He's never been suspected of a sniff of anything illegal, but there's something about him that says he would have made a great mafia boss if circumstances had gone that way. She half expects to find a thousand dollar bill folded into her hand when he lifts it to kiss her knuckles. He's a couple of inches taller than Oscar and doesn't work so hard to look amiable. “Ms Flynn.”

“Great party as usual,” she says, and lavishes one of her better smiles on him and his missus, because he doesn't scare her, though he would like to.

He inclines his head graciously, turns to give Oscar a very formal handclasp and a chilly raise of the lips. “Looking a bit down at heel, there Oscar. You should reconsider joining the company. Keep your hands a little cleaner.”

“We've always had different definitions of dirt, sir.”

Vega senior's eyes narrow, and Angie wonders how much of the OTT bling was put on in order to impress Oscar. Sounds like they're having another of their cold and bitter feuds over filthy lucre and the value thereof. While she kind of admires Oscar's stance that the love of money is the root of all evil, she wonders if he'd still feel the same way if he had grown up with none of it.

Angie's moved on to share a limp handshake with Daddy's latest wife. She doesn't like to call any young woman a bimbo, but the word is hard to avoid. She is as doll-like a person as Angie has ever encountered, and her tits put Crystal's to shame. She's smiling like there's no tomorrow but there are lines of panic and anxiety around her eyes, as she tries to remember who all these very important people are.

“I'm sorry,”she holds out a hand with purple glittery nails for Oscar to kiss. “You work with my husband?”

He stills. Angie's struck suddenly by how strange this must be for him. His step-mother. She's half his age, she met him at the wedding but she doesn't remember who he is.

Tricky. She feels kind of sorry for the girl. It's a social blunder of fairly major proportions. But Oscar just returns her smile and says “Less often than he'd like, I think.”

She pulls him into the crowd and he's back to looking subdued. “That was kind,” she says, “I wouldn't like to be in her shoes tonight.” She rolls her eyes. “Though I'm really beginning to regret mine too.”

He doesn't come back with a quip, just keeps smiling, and it's the same fake smile, the one people paste on over pain. 

“What?” she nudges him with her shoulder. “You've got that 'someone just ran over my dog' look. Is that what happened? I didn't know you had a dog.”

He glances at her, and away. She thinks he's not going to tell her, and that doesn't sit right with her because she's his friend isn't she? He has to know that if anyone gives a damn it's her.

“It just,” he shakes his head, like he can't believe what an idiot he is. “I miss my mother. We had parties like this even then, but she was the one who put the heart in it. She'd be the warmth that drew you in. It's all empty show now she's gone. And I don't know how he thinks he can replace her. At all. She's irreplaceable to me.”

It's like they've been two different ropes lying loosely curled around each other and now something's pulled. She can feel it inside, tightening into a knot that she doesn't know how she'll ever pick undone.

She kicks off the uncomfortable shoes and grabs them in one hand. “Well, we've said hello. Your father's seen that you were here. What do you say to sneaking out through the kitchens and going to my place for left-over Thai chicken and mulled wine?”

He perks up. “What kind of wine?”

“I don't know! Five dollar bargain bin red wine. Does it matter? It's going to have stuff in it.”

He's already heading for the server's entrance. With shoes in hand she strides after him, admiring the reflection of her dress in the mirrored walls. 

“OK, but I get to fix the spices.”

“You always put in too much cinnamon and not enough sugar.”

“It's not meant to taste like syrup.”

“It's not meant to taste like paint stripper either.” She has to stop outside at the back entrance to the hotel, in a narrow filthy alleyway that feels more like her own beat, to put the shoes back on and rootle in her blue velvet clutch for the car keys. “And I'm driving!”

*

They're back at Angie's place, where Angie has dressed her solitary tree in the egg-cup bells Manny made for her fifteen years ago. It's her first Christmas without him and she'd been glad of the excuse to get out of its emptiness. But with Oscar pottering around the kitchen, opening cupboards and complaining about her lack of fresh nutmegs, it's not empty any more. 

She lifts herself onto the kitchen counter top next to the simmering pot. God knows what's in there. An orange slice drifts to the top, which is cunning because she thought she'd eaten the last orange yesterday. Angie makes decisions easily and follows them through because there's no other way for her to be. Doesn't mean she's not subject to that nagging little voice that tells her what a terrible mistake she's making. It just means she's learned to ignore it. “I've been thinking.”

“It's a hazard of the job,” Oscar agrees. His jacket is off and his tie is on the coat rack. He's undone his collar and rolled up his shirt sleeves and he looks more like himself than he has done all evening.

“We spend so much time together, why not just stay?”

He had been paring the root ginger she keeps in the freezer. Now he carefully puts the knife down and blinks at her, startled.

It's going to be OK because this is Oscar, and whatever he says – yes or no – he won't make it awkward. It's one of the reasons she felt able to say it at all.

“To clarify,” he says, a little stiffly, with the sense that wheels are turning behind his quiet eyes. “Are you offering me your spare bedroom, or is this you making a pass at me?”

She slips off the counter and pads up to lean against him, still all figure-hugging velvet and cleavage and sophisticated hair. He's going to have to show a bit more interest than that. “How about you tell me which one of those you would prefer?”

His eyes light with warmth and amusement at her shenanigans, and it's comfortable to stand together like this – easy to slip her arms around his neck. His hands cup her hips, warm and strong and gentle. “It would be wiser to say 'the spare room', but that wouldn't be the truth.”

So, they're doing this, and it's turning out good.

“And you're fully committed to the truth,” she says, friendly-mocking to conceal her twist of nerves as she leans in and kisses him for the first time. She's been very careful never to imagine how this might feel. The sense of a boundary crossed, a transgression that can never be undone, is a breathtaking plummet into new possibilities, and she's maybe still too unbalanced to appreciate it fully.

“As always,” he smiles at her uncertainty, and steps away to pour the drink, giving her the space she needs to weigh her options, to think it through.

Oscar hands her a glass of mulled wine, topped by a plume of cinnamon spiced steam. He's remarkably unruffled by all this, but she suspects the calm covers his own rapid calculus of change.

She puts on Miracle on 34th Street, and lights the gas fire. Outside it's dark, and rain taps against the windows, but he plugs in the Christmas tree, and inside it's suddenly fire-warm and starred with many-colored lights. On balance, these are the kind of diamonds she prefers.

“So?” he sits on the couch, where he's sat a hundred times before. She settles in close to him, back nestled into his chest. He circles an arm around her waist and leans his cheek against her hair and that's...

She'd been thinking this was complicated, but you know what? It isn't.

“That was a five at the most,” she sips from her glass and the mulled wine is hot and strong, not quite sweet enough, and perfect. “Kiss wise, I mean.”

“Oh yes? You want to explain the conceptual underpinnings of your scale there, or are we just going to improve by practice?”

The last bit of tension dissipates as she grins. Safe, she's redefining the word with every moment, because this is safe, yes, but not like _boring_. No, this is safe like _home_.


End file.
